Why New Yorkers Are Full of Hot Air

Before this column adjourned last week, you may recall that Superior Court Judge Judith Chirlin wrote me that a strange warning accompanied her new blow dryer: “Never use while sleeping.”

Since then, I’ve learned there are violators out there (you know who you are).

James Lewis confided: “A friend who moved here from New York couldn’t sleep without the sounds of the city in the background. So he would have a blow dryer going at night to help him sleep.”

The downside was that the ex-New Yorker would “blow out a blow dryer every two to three weeks,” Lewis reported.

So why not put that sound on a tape recorder? “He said it just wouldn’t be the same,” Lewis responded.

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LEND AN EAR: A sign announcing a van service that goes from UCLA to University Presbyterian Church that shows a portrait of a well-known painter (see photo).

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A NAGGING PROBLEM? Wendy Finley of Goleta noticed that a court settlement regarding house repairs mentioned a “mother-in-law addition” that involved some “pain.” (see accompanying). And please, no jokes about how much distance--in feet or city blocks--there should be between the main house and the “mother-in-law.”

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L.A. VERSE: I asked readers to update the following, pastoral ditty that was used early this century to help schoolchildren memorize the order of the streets in downtown L.A.:

“From Main I Spring to Broadway, and over the Hill to Olive, and wouldn’t it be Grand to Hope to pick a Flower on Figueroa.”

Mike Frankovich of West L.A. submitted a ‘90s version that celebrates L.A.’s car culture:

“The Main thing I hate about driving in L.A. is the way other drivers seem to Spring out of nowhere. Broadway is filled with over-the-Hill drivers and those who have had a few too many Olive-topped martinis. A Grand idea would be to go to work with the Hope that none of those former Flower children in their BMWs will cut you off while trying to find Figueroa.”

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L.A. INSULT OF THE WEEK: From Alison Lurie’s 1965 novel, “The Nowhere City,” about an Eastern couple who move to Mar Vista (and how many novels can you name where the protagonists live in Mar Vista?):

“The basic thing about L.A., he explained, was that it lacked the dimension of time. As Katherine had first pointed out to him, there were no seasons there, no days of the week, no night and day; beyond that, there was (or was supposed to be) no youth and age. But worst, and most frightening, there was no past or future--only an eternal dizzying present.”

Sounds like a candidate for a nighttime blow dryer.

miscelLAny:

Dennis Levin of Larchmont Village applauds the fact that Pink’s Famous Chili Dogs is holding a charity event Nov. 5-9, a 59th year anniversary special during which hot dogs will sell for 59 cents. But he was taken aback by a notation in a company flier that said, “59% of EACH Anniversary Chili Dog will be donated to a different charity each day.” Asked Levin: “Does that mean that I have to sit there and share [most of] my hot dog with some homeless guy?”

Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.